ME 322 — Machine Design I
Undergraduate machine design as a constrained decision: design variables, feasible sets, and mechanics-based verification.
Machine component analysis and selection: stress, failure criteria, fatigue, and the design of shafts, fasteners, springs, gears and bearings.
The course is framed around a decision rather than a formula sheet. Component choices are searched over a feasible set under explicit constraints, so students practice justifying a design against loading, life and manufacturability instead of only computing a factor of safety.
How computation is used
Computation here is for comparing designs and defending a choice, not for learning a package. Prepared MATLAB code enumerates stepped-shaft diameters and fillet ratios, evaluates von Mises and Tresca safety factors, imposes a geometry constraint and selects a feasible design; Python generates lecture examples and figures. Students vary assumptions, inspect what remains feasible, and explain the choice they made.
The Fall 2025 final project makes this concrete. Students first formulate a constrained compression-spring design problem, then add an infinite-life fatigue condition and compare the two resulting designs, so a mechanics formula visibly changes the feasible set rather than adding a line to a report. Submissions are code plus a written account of assumptions and contributions.
Redesign
The Fall 2026 offering runs as seven modules. Module 0 sets the pattern the rest reuse: state the design variables, enumerate the candidates, screen them against the mechanical checks, and select against an objective that has to be named. Material, manufacturing cost, carbon emissions and the people who use the part enter as design variables and constraints alongside strength, so a candidate is defended on all of them at once. The later modules apply the same four steps to stress concentration and static failure, fatigue and life, shaft systems, compression springs, threaded components and gear systems, closing with a synthesis session. Lecture sources carry guided design questions in student and instructor variants; an output-shaft exercise asks students to choose an objective and three constraints for themselves.